“DEAR SIR,—Upon my honour I began a letter to you some time ago, and did not finish it because I imagined you were then near your _apotheosis_, as poor Goldsmith said upon a former occasion, when he thought your party was coming into administration; and being one of your old Barons of Scotland, my pride could not brook the appearance of paying my court to a minister amongst the crowd of interested expectants on his accession. At present I take it for granted that I need be under no such apprehension, and therefore I resume the indulgence of my inclination. This may be perhaps a singular method of beginning a correspondence; and in one sense may not be very complimentative. But I can sincerely assure you, dear sir, that I feel and mean a genuine compliment to Mr. Burke himself. It is generally thought no meanness to solicit the notice and favour of a man in power; and surely it is much less a meanness to endeavour by honest means to have the honour and pleasure of being on an agreeable footing with a man of superior knowledge, abilities, and genius. “I have to thank you for the obligations which you have already conferred upon me by the welcome which I have, upon repeated occasions, experienced under your roof. When I was last in London you gave me a general invitation, which I value more than a Treasury warrant:—an invitation to ‘the feast of reason,’ and, what I like still more, ‘the flow of soul,’ which you dispense with liberal and elegant abundance, is, in my estimation, a privilege of enjoying certain felicity; and we know that riches and honour are desirable only as means to felicity, and that they often fail of the end. “Most heartily do I rejoice that our present ministers have at last yielded to conciliation. For amidst all the sanguinary zeal of my countrymen I have professed myself a friend to our fellow-subjects in America, so far as they claim an exemption from being taxed by the representatives of the King’s British subjects. I do not perfectly agree with you; for I deny the Declaratory Act, and I am a warm Tory in its true constitutional sense. I wish I were a commissioner, or one of the secretaries of the commission for the grand treaty. I am to be in London this spring, and if his Majesty should ask me what I would choose, my answer will be, to assist in the compact between Britain and America. May I beg to hear from you, and in the meantime to have my compliments made acceptable to Mrs. Burke?—I am, dear sir, your most obedient, humble servant, “JAMES BOSWELL.”[63] On the 18th March Boswell arrived in London, and at once renewed his intercourse with Dr. Johnson. They spent Good Friday together, Boswell accompanying the lexicographer to morning and evening service in St. Clement’s Church. Next evening, while taking tea with him, Boswell severely experienced Dr. Johnson’s resentment. The narrative we present in his own words:—